Census 2021 will collect data on OBCs, first time in independent India

Census 2021 will for the first time in independent India collect data on Other Backwards Castes (OBCs), a move considered politically significant ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The then V P Singh government had announced 27 per cent reservation for OBCs based on the Mandal Commission recommendation, which was broadly prepared on the basis of the country's last castes data collected in the 1931 census. The last census of 2010 counted the population at 1.21 billion, which was made public as a provisional data in 2011.